


only in mirrors is it well to look

by slightlyraspberry



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Character Study, Coming Out, Episode Related, F/M, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, idk what to say abt this it's 3am ill come back if i remember how i was gonna tag, tenuous knowledge of 80s culture, will isn't nearly as mean as he should be in this but i dont feel like fixing it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:15:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25012243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slightlyraspberry/pseuds/slightlyraspberry
Summary: He doesn’t need to say it out loud, anyway. No one else is ever going to know.
Comments: 18
Kudos: 25





	only in mirrors is it well to look

**Author's Note:**

> this was gonna be a 1-2k musing on internalized homophobia. unfortunately i'm gay so it's longer. Canon-compliant up to "Faith Based Initiative" bc that's the episode I was up to when i finished this. ik will and kate get together at some point but idk how so I made that part up :) uploaded w no beta and no second draft enjoy

Will doesn’t really understand why his friends talk about girls all the time. He knows a couple, and he likes them fine, but his friends have been nothing short of obsessed with them for the last few years. Will, though, he’d much rather be in the library with his history books and Walkman than sneaking out to meet up with the girls at Wycombe Abbey. 

The girls that go to those late-night rendezvous make Will uncomfortable anyway—they wear bright eyeshadow and lipstick and roll their skirts up to their underwear, which Will has no interest in seeing. He thinks maybe he should have an interest, so he lets his friends drag him along next time. He quickly gets bored, though, and asks a girl with wispy blonde hair to her shoulders to share her book. They read in silence together while their friends chatter and flirt, her flipping pages when Will nods. She’s the first person Will has ever known who reads faster than him.

The book is about chemistry. It isn’t Will’s favorite subject, but he thinks it’s a hell of a lot more interesting than girls and sex. When they reach the end of a chapter that stretches on for ages, she turns to him and bluntly tells him she wants to be a doctor. The girl is American, like him.

“I hate biology,” Will says absentmindedly in response. He realizes what he said and is glad for the cover of darkness that hides his blush when he stammers, “I meant—that’s, um, really cool.”

The girl lets out a soft, distinctly girlish giggle and closes the book. She stands up and walks over to where her friends were saying goodnight to his, waving shyly goodbye at Will as she goes.

He thinks about her at breakfast the next day. A little odd, but then, so is he. Will usually likes to make more conversation with people, but silence seemed like her M.O. and he’s glad he didn’t interfere. He doesn’t really think about her again until the next time his friends try to sneak out. 

“Will, don’t you wanna see Mousy Macy again?” Alec asks.

“Yeah, Will, you should come so you and Mouse can get it on,” sniggers Theo. 

“I don’t understand,” says Will, looking up from his essay. “Who is Mousy Macy?”

“The girl with the book. Macy Tripp. Seemed like you two were made for each other.”

Will squints at Theo. “Because we read while you failed at keeping it in your pants?”

“Oh, come on, Willy,” says Alec. “Just come. Don’t be such a square.”

Will is no master at standing up to peer pressure, so he goes. Mousy Macy is there again, a different book in hand, but Will had brought his own this time.

“A Comprehensive History of United States Foreign Policy,” she reads dryly over his shoulder. She has to get up on her tiptoes to reach. “Riveting.”

“Says the girl with ‘mousy’ in her name,” Will returns.

She scowls and turns towards him. “So what if I am?”

“You’re not,” Will says. “Mousy.” Macy looks like she’s about to say something rude, but closes her mouth instead. 

“I don’t even know your name,” she says.

Will opens his book and points to where ‘William T. Bailey’ is scratched in pen on the inside cover. Then he flips to where he left off and sits down. “You don’t have to read it with me,” he says. Macy shrugs and sits down next to him. She takes charge of turning the pages, though—she still reads faster than him.

His friends don’t have to convince him to go out with them next time. They hoot and holler and accuse him of being in love with Macy, but the truth is that Will just likes having someone to read with. Sometimes they talk, sometimes they just flip pages, but Will feels like Macy might be the person who understands him best. It makes him feel weird that she’s never seen him in his usual state of talking and planning and whirlwind studying, but sitting in silence with her just feels natural. 

They start meeting up on free days. They go to joint-school lunches and lectures and dances together as friends. Will always wears the same suit from his grandmother’s funeral and the only non-uniform tie he has, but Macy always has a different dress. Her parents must have money, Will thinks. He also thinks that maybe her mother is trying to dress the mouse out of her when he sees the latest deep red sheath. On any other girl it would probably look sexy (and Will does see a couple boys throw appreciative glances her way) but on Macy’s hunched shoulders it’s just unsettling to him. 

So Will gives her his jacket. He’s not large by any means, but Macy’s so short that the jacket is longer than her dress. They’ve never really danced at these things over the two years they’ve been attending together, just snuck outside to read. Sometimes Macy smokes, which surprised Will when she started, but they _are_ in their last year of school and Macy seems to think that means growing up and that growing up means smoking cigarettes. She doesn’t smoke tonight, though, instead sucking on a mint she found in Will’s jacket pocket.

“Isn’t it weird that we weren’t friends until last fall?” she says. They’re sitting on a bench outside a side door. Will’s a little cold, but he thinks Macy’s probably colder.

“I dunno. Maybe.”

“Will, do you think we’ll be friends after we graduate?”

“Who says I want to stay friends?”

“Will.” Macy elbows him. “Seriously. I think you’re my best friend.”

Will sighs. “Me too.”

She smiles and sucks on the mint. “Still, though. Are we gonna stay friends?”

“Macy, Carnegie Mellon and Case are not that far apart.” Neither of them got their first choice. Will was hoping for Stanford and Macy had never, ever really wanted to live in Ohio, but the chips fell in the Midwest for both of them.

“Two hours, Will. That’s a lot. Especially for two college students with no cars.”

“You say that like we haven’t spent a summer an ocean apart and come out with our friendship intact.”

“It’ll just… it’ll just be different,” she says dejectedly. 

“‘Different’ was not synonymous with ‘worse,’ last time I checked,” Will replies. Macy looks at Will. He looks back at her. Her eyes are brown and shining in the moonlight. Will wonders how she’s never had a boyfriend. Macy may be quiet, but she’s smart and she’s pretty and a damn catch. 

“No,” she says, “it’s not,” and kisses him. 

Will doesn’t know what else to do, so he tries kissing her back. The problem with this is that he’s never really kissed anyone before. It’s awkward, but he thinks he mostly succeeds before pulling away. 

“Macy, what—” he stutters, pushing his glasses up his nose.

She leans in and kisses him again before he can say anything. Her small hand comes up to the side of his face, and she gently rests her fingertips on his cheek. She tastes overwhelmingly like mint. 

He’s been led to believe kissing would be more enjoyable. It’s okay. Her hand is soft and warm and he’s pleasantly surprised when she bites his lip a little (and that’s not at all like the Macy he knows, why would she do that?) but it’s really just okay. He lets her carry on for a few more kisses and reciprocates as best he can. Eventually, he decides enough is enough and gently takes her wrist.

“We shouldn’t do this, Els—Macy.” He’s so used to chastising Elsie that her name just rolls off his tongue before he realizes who he’s actually scolding.

And there it is. Macy’s like a sister to him, that’s why he can’t enjoy this. It’s not that she reminds him of Elsie so much as he’s never even considered anything other than a platonic relationship with her. He thinks she’s pretty, sure, and smart and kind and understanding. But he doesn’t feel heat on his back every time her fingers brush it, he doesn’t get butterflies when he thinks about her. And Macy’s smart, she knows that he almost called her his kid sister’s name, she knows what that means.

Macy meets his eyes. “I thought—I thought this is what you wanted.” She sheepishly puts her hand in her lap and looks away. “I’ve really ruined it now, haven’t I.”

“No, you…” Will doesn’t know what to say. “You could never ruin anything with me.”

The silence that follows, cliche as it may be, is deafening.

“We’re still friends, right?” Will asks eventually. They’re both looking straight ahead, but he can feel Macy nod beside him.

“Could you just… leave me alone, please?” she says softly. So he leaves Macy and his suit jacket behind and goes to fetch one of her girlfriends to check on her.

They’re still friends, but it’s weird. They don’t go together to everything anymore and Macy starts seeing Don in his French class and breaks up with him a month later so she can go to Ohio without strings. Will thinks about Macy and tries to ignore the deepening pit in his stomach when he recounts that night.

But they call each other over the summer, and when she tells him her new number, he thinks they’ll be okay. And even if they aren’t, he reasons, high school friends never stay friends after college. Just too much distance.

-

Will likes college a lot. He likes the classes, he likes Pittsburgh, he even likes the urban monstrosity of a dorm he lives in.

What Will likes more than college, though, is Kevin O’Brien. Kevin is a friend of Jan’s, who is a friend of Melissa, who is his roommate Chris’s girlfriend. Melissa starts coming over in September, and by November has commandeered most of their dorm room. She offers Will her bed in Kristy P.’s room, which Will respectfully declines, but she manages to work out a deal that lands her in his bed and Will on the bunk above Kevin O’Brien down the hall. 

He doesn’t expect to like Kevin much. He’s a few inches taller than Will and unnervingly thin, with sandy-brown hair and eyes that mostly look green but sometimes look gray and this nervous energy that keeps his hands moving all the time. Will’s never been one for constant movement—he keeps busy, but he wants everything he does to be purposeful.

Kevin is the opposite of purposeful. Kevin is what one might call frivolous. He blows off his homework and likes to play guitar when Will is trying to study.

He’s also one of the most interesting people Will has ever met. They can talk for hours about philosophy or history or politics or really whatever Will wants to talk about. Will comes in spouting off something he learned in Multivariable Calculus or Introduction to Renaissance Literature and Kevin always has something to say about it. Will doesn’t think he’s ever met anyone with that big a database stored inside their head. He’s never met anyone besides himself with that many opinions on things, either.

Kevin’s friends become Will’s friends, eventually. There’s Jan, who annoys Will by smoking pot while leaning on his windowsill but makes it up to him by giving him drawings she’s made in class and eventually covering his wall with them. Elizabeth and Jack are a couple that were together in high school and have somehow stayed together. Elizabeth sings while Kevin plays his guitar sometimes, and Jack will tap out a beat on his notebook as he works out equations like a madman. A rotating cast of people from every department come in from time to time and just sit and read in their room. Kevin will usually ask them a question about some weird fact that’s living up in his head, and give them a snack if they answer correctly.

Normally, Will would mind having so many people in his personal space. But he thinks it beats having to be around Chris and Melissa making out all the time, and he likes always having someone in the room he can beg to help him with homework. And Kevin always introduces people so charmingly that Will can’t help but befriend them. When they’re alone, Kevin will talk about how he met the day’s visitors.

“Alexa said the air in the library is too dry for her, so I said she could come here. She’s a really nice girl, you know? Wants to be an engineer,” Kevin says, yawning.

“Okay,” Will says. “So why was she reading _Ulysses_?”

Kevin uses his long legs to lightly kick the bottom of Will’s bed. “Some people read for pleasure, William.”

“I read for pleasure. That’s why I’ve never finished _Ulysses_.”

“Whatever, man. James Joyce is a genius.”

Will is on the phone with Macy about once a month. He tells her about Melissa evicting him and Kevin’s motley crew, and she tells him about how hard organic chemistry is and the stunning color of the fall leaves. Come December, they decide to meet up to get a break from studying before finals. Will knows Kevin is a Pittsburgh native and has a car collecting dust at his mother’s house, so he tells Macy not to worry about driving, he’ll meet her in Cleveland.

He bribes Kevin with the promise of a warm meal and gas money to drive him to Ohio, and they drive three hours in the snow just to get lost trying to find the student union. It’s a Saturday morning, and a bitter one at that, so not many people are out walking around. But they eventually find Macy sitting in a little booth with three mugs in front of her.

She smiles at Will as he slides into the bench opposite her, Kevin sliding in next to him. First she pushes a mug at Will and then one at Kevin. 

“Yours is the one with a bunch of creamer in it, Will. Sorry, I didn’t know how you liked yours,” she says apologetically to Kevin.

He gives her that charming smile he has. “Black is fine.”

“Macy, this is Kevin. Kevin, Macy. She’s a friend from school,” Will says as he dumps a sugar packet into his coffee. He picks up the mug and inhales the scent before taking a sip. It’s still bitter, but he’s so cold that he’ll take anything with a temperature above 20 degrees.

And they just catch up. It’s nice to see her again. It’s strange, too. Will hadn’t realized how quickly he’d moved on from high school. Macy looks strange when he’s sitting next to Kevin, like she doesn’t quite fit into the picture of College Will’s life. It’s nice to see her a bit more talkative, though. Will watches Kevin as he draws Macy into conversation, asking about her classes and clubs and whatnot, barely letting Will get a word in edgewise. 

“So, Macy,” Will says, interrupting Kevin’s tangent on the merits of student-run radio, “how’s your mom?”

“Oh, don’t ask her that, William, that’s so boring. Macy’s much too interesting to talk about her parents instead of herself.”

“She’s fine, thanks, Will. Got a cat, I think.”

“Wow. A cat,” says Will. Didn’t it used to be easier to talk to Macy? “So what were you saying about the radio, Kev?” He still loves Macy, but she seems so… mousy next to Kevin.

They brunch for an hour or two. Macy’s brought some pastries her mother sent her. But Kevin and Will have to get on the road if they want to get through the snow before dark, so Will thanks Macy seeing him and they leave. 

He and Kevin talk about her on the way back. 

“She’s like a sister to me. It’s weird to see her outside of school, though.”

“That’s why you can’t make close friends in high school, man. Runs the risk of making things weird.” Kevin taps the steering wheel to the beat of the music as he drives.

“What, you never had close friends before me and Jan?”

“Nope, not really,” Kevin says casually. “Not a lot of time, between schoolwork and clubs and being the only out kid at the school.”

And here’s the thing—Will had pretty much assumed Kevin was gay upon hearing that he was majoring in musical theater, but it’s one thing to assume that and very much another to hear it from your best friend when homosexuals have been dying by the thousands (and Will realizes that Kevin has replaced Macy as his best friend when he wasn’t looking).

He doesn’t really know what to say to that, so he just hums noncommittally and changes the subject to finals. They talk about their upcoming tests and Jan’s latest drawing and Will feels the pit in his stomach from the spring come back. He’s not sure why.

Macy calls him a week later. He’s packing for winter break. Kevin’s put on a tape of really terrible pop covers of Christmas carols, but they’re bouncing to the beat as they pack and sucking on candy canes and Will doesn’t really care at all how bad the music is. When the phone rings, he pauses the music and makes Kevin leave and bother Elizabeth in her room. 

“So I’ve been thinking about this for a bit,” Macy says. “And. Um. Will.”

“How are you today, Will? When’s your flight? Did you sleep okay?” he snips.

“Will, you could’ve just told me you were gay when I tried to kiss you,” she says, words tumbling out like the Hoover Dam just broke. Will hears her inhale and thinks she’s probably smoking.

He pushes his glasses up. “Macy, I’m not gay.”

“Come on, Will. You look at Kevin like he hung the goddamn moon. I get it.”

“What—I’m not—we’re not—he’s my friend.” he says sharply. The pit in his stomach is back and deeper than ever.

“It’s nothing to be—” 

“I’m not gay, Macy.” He hangs up.

And he lets Kevin back into the room and they start playing the tape again, but Will doesn’t dance along this time. He doesn’t want to accidentally bump into Kevin again. He doesn’t want to accidentally bump into Kevin because he knows he’ll feel heat on his back and butterflies in his stomach that he never felt with Macy and he’s not gay, he’s not, but he can’t risk touching Kevin right now because he thinks if he does he’ll explode.

As it turns out, he doesn’t have to worry about accidentally touching Kevin while they dance. The touching comes later, and barely by accident. They had a little celebration in their dorm room tonight with all of their friends, just the gang and some chips and a few bottles of cheap vodka and some homemade jello shots. Will isn’t a lightweight, but it doesn’t exactly take a miracle to get him going, and he’s feeling very loose and very lonely by the time everyone makes it back to their own buildings and he and Kevin are sitting on the floor and finishing the last of the spiked jello.

“Macy thinks I’m in love with you,” Will says. His normal brain knows this is a bad idea, but his drunk brain says he can just blame it on being drunk.

“Well, are you?” Kevin says, slurring a bit. His energy goes down when he drinks. Will doesn’t like it—Kevin should always be bouncing around and annoying him.

“No. I’m not gay, so. I can’t be.”

Kevin puts his hand on top of Will’s. “Okay," he says thoughtfully. "I am gay. But I’m not in love with you either.”

But he pats Will’s hand, and Will feels very, very warm, so he takes his hand out from under Kevin’s and uses it to pull Kevin’s arm around his shoulder and leans in. He’s not in love with Kevin, no matter what Macy says, but he likes touching him casually and he doesn’t know why he ever avoids it.

“I think I could be, though.”

“What? In love with me? Or gay?”

Will doesn’t answer. He pretends to be asleep against Kevin’s chest and tells himself that he’s just drunk, he doesn’t know the answers to those questions. He falls asleep for real within ten minutes to the sound of measured breathing and faint music coming from the boom box. 

Will wakes up the next morning with a blanket over him and a crick in his back that hurts like hell. Sunlight is streaming through their one little window, and Will blinks as he tries to make sense of what’s happening. He feels around the floor for his glasses—he could’ve sworn he laid them right next to him. 

“Looking for these?” 

Will looks up. He hadn’t even noticed Kevin sitting at his desk, Will’s glasses folded up in his hand. 

“Yeah,” he says, reluctantly pushing himself off the floor. “Thanks.” He grabs his glasses and puts them on. The sunlight seems so much worse now. 

“Your mom called. Said they moved your flight up to noon.”

Will stops squinting at the window and looks at the clock. It’s almost 10 already—he should be on the airport shuttle in 20 minutes. It’s a 7 minute walk to get there, so he has a whopping 13 minutes to finish packing and get dressed and find his goddamn boarding pass. “What? You couldn’t have led with that?”

“Relax,” Kevin says. “Your stuff’s on the shuttle already. Jan brought it down before breakfast.” Shit. Will missed breakfast, too. “Just get ready to go, will you?”

So Will runs down to the shower and throws on some clothes and a winter coat and digs through his desk drawers until he finds his boarding pass shoved into his passport, which is in turn shoved into a book. 

Kevin just sits across the room at his desk for all of this, leg bouncing incessantly. Will’s got his hand on the doorknob—three minutes to spare, he should catch the shuttle in plenty of time—when Kevin says, “Will. About last night…”

Will tenses. He doesn’t want to have this conversation. There’s not even a conversation to be had, really, he thinks, he didn’t really say anything that wasn’t excusable via alcohol. “What?”

Kevin looks into his eyes, searching for something Will doesn’t want to ponder. “Nothing. Have a safe trip, pal.”

“Thanks. Merry Christmas.”

Will goes home, and it’s good to see his family. They always open presents on Christmas Eve, right after church. Will opens the special edition of _Moby-Dick_ from his father and a mixtape from Elsie and the socks from his stepmother next to the beautifully decorated Christmas tree. He missed the decorating this year, he thinks sadly. His and Elsie’s breaks hadn’t quite lined up for it. 

As usual, they disperse when his father gets an urgent phone call. What kind of father takes phone calls at 10 on Christmas Eve? Typical, Will thinks. He goes upstairs, but doesn’t really feel like opening Melville. He remembers what he told Kevin—reading for pleasure doesn’t include _Ulysses_. _Moby-Dick_ either, for that matter. 

Will searches his bookshelf for something to cheer him up. He knows it’s important that his father do his job well, but he can’t help but feel a little cheated of their annual tradition. So he pulls _The Importance of Being Earnest_ off the shelf and tries to read it, but can’t really take it seriously. A farce isn’t right. He flips to the end of the volume and starts in on _Salome_. It’s depressing, but Will thinks he’s entitled to a little wallowing.

“Only in mirrors is it well to look, for mirrors do but show us masks,” he reads aloud to himself. Kevin would like that. He’s probably read the play already, come to think of it. 

Kevin. Will thinks about what Macy said. He’s afraid it might be true. He thinks back to school and never caring about girls, about working so much harder for chem class than any others, even though he doesn’t like chemistry, just to see young, green Mr. Wilson smile at him when he passed back an A+. 

He thinks about the way Kevin’s casual, meaningless touches feel like touching a spark plug. He thinks about saving interesting facts to tell Kevin and the way Kevin’s eyes glint when he smiles at Will and how he laughs at Will when he falls asleep studying.

He’s still thinking about it when his father knocks. He sits on Will’s bed and tells him he should know that Sarah just got a dishonorable discharge. Will’s godmother. He has fond memories of her taking him to see the lions at the zoo as a kid. She had sent him a nice new watch for graduation, he remembers.

She was discharged, his father tells him, because they found out about June. 

June went with them to the zoo. She always signed the cards Sarah sent. Will didn’t know her well, but it hits him then exactly what she was to Sarah and exactly why he can never tackle his previous train of thought again. 

Mirrors do but show us masks, indeed.

He nods and tells his father he’ll write Sarah tomorrow with his regards. 

Will closes his book once his father leaves and lays on his back, staring at his ceiling fan. He thinks about Oscar Wilde and Harvey Milk and Sarah and resolves to never, ever admit what he knows to be true. He can’t even admit it to himself. 

Whenever he thinks about Kevin again over break, he feels the pit in his stomach balloon to full size. He thinks about calling him. But what would he say? 

Will goes back to school in January and everything’s the same. Kevin still brings harmless strangers to their dorm and they still talk about anything and everything. Neither of them brings up the night before break.

He takes up with a pretty history major named Ashley, then a pre-law named Charlotte, and even has a go with a dancer called Star. Will finds his mind wandering to Kevin when he and his current girlfriend kiss, when they cuddle, when he loses his virginity to Charlotte, and pretends that he’s just longing for the last girl.

Sometimes he catches himself looking at Kevin and feels the pit coming back. On the days his stomach is so tense he can’t eat, he gets blackout drunk and forgets everything by the next morning.

He’s heading to Jan’s room to study after one of those nights when he hears Kevin muttering through her cracked door.

“...like he’s in fucking Narnia, Jan. A total closet case. Last night was like the fifth time he confessed his love.”

Will stops to listen. He had gotten hammered about that many times since he started dating around. 

“And I like him, y’know?” he hears Kevin say. “But I can’t do the whole secret relationship thing. Not with someone in that much denial. You know he’s had three girlfriends in two months? And they all look the same.” Will’s had three girlfriends in two months. 

He hears Jan sigh. “That blows, Kev, but I don’t know what you want me to say.” Will’s frozen to the spot. He can hear his heart beating quickly, and it feels like the pit in his stomach has expanded and is choking him.

“Just letting off steam, I guess,” Kevin says from inside Jan’s room. “Isn’t he supposed to meet us here soon?”

And Will, for fear of being discovered, runs back to his building and dials Jan’s phone. He tells her his hangover is still killing him and asks for a rain check. 

He doesn’t see Kevin for the rest of the day, and pretends to be asleep when he comes back to the dorm. Pretending to sleep is something Will does a lot now.

Star dumps him three days later and Will doesn’t try to date for the rest of the year. He decides it’ll be less stress-inducing to room in a single next term. He and Kevin call each other once in a while over the summer, but they drift apart in the way college kids do and stop seeing each other at more than the occasional party and in the dining hall when neither of them has anyone else to sit with.

Suddenly it’s Will’s last term and he’s feeling melancholy. He thinks maybe he didn’t have enough fun while he was here. Marshall scholarships don’t come to those who have fun, but he wonders if it was worth it. He goes and finds a party that he’s really a bit too old for, but he sees Kevin there and he hasn’t really thought about him in years so Will thinks he can go and talk to him without falling into a hole of self-loathing. Kevin’s sitting in the corner, nursing a beer and looking morose.

Will grabs one of his own and sits next to him. “Rough night?”

Kevin looks mildly surprised. “Long time, no see, Will.”

“I guess.” Will shrugs. “How are you?”

“The usual. Brokenhearted, drunk, about to become a starving artist.”

Will laughs a little. “Who would have the nerve to break your heart? You’re too good for that.”

‘You’d be surprised,” Kevin mutters. He finishes off what was left of his bottle. They sit in silence for a while after that. Will finishes his drink and grabs them both stronger ones. 

“Want to go back to my place and smoke?” says Kevin.

Will assents, even though he doesn’t smoke. Instead of rolling a joint when they get to the shitty little apartment, Kevin turns around and kisses Will softly against the door. Will lets it happen. He even kisses back. If he’s honest with himself, he knew he wanted this to happen as soon as he decided to sit down next to Kevin.

And he hasn’t thought about that thing he won’t ever admit to since that first Christmas, but when Kevin kisses him he realizes that this is what kissing is supposed to feel like and all of the Macys in the world can’t compare to this. This is what the books and the poems and the movies talk about, this perfect (not perfect, tipsy and handsy and messy) meeting of their lips and the heat that Will can’t escape.

It scares him. He keeps going anyway. Will allows himself to have this—one night indulging the thing he can’t say before he locks it away in a box for good.

He helps himself to Kevin’s coffee in the morning. He leaves the pot there when Kevin doesn’t wake up and leaves with no intention of ever seeing him again.

Will stands under the crappy water pressure he has in upperclassman housing, only marginally better than that of his freshman dorm. He tries to say it out loud for the first time since he resolved not ever to acknowledge it.

When he tries, the pit in his stomach returns as if it was eagerly awaiting the opportunity. His lungs refuse to let air into his throat and he feels choked up. _Just say it, Will_ , he thinks. _Two words. It’s not rocket science._

“I’m…” he says, looking up at the showerhead. _Gay, Will. You’re gay. Just say it._ Halfway through feeling embarrassed for talking to himself in his head, he realizes this is maybe the first time he’s ever allowed what he’s always known to take form in his head. It’s the first time the pit in his stomach has spit out actual words for why it existed.

Will decides that’s probably more introspection than he’s comfortable with for a lifetime. He doesn’t need to say it out loud, anyway. No one else is ever going to know.

-

He has one or two girlfriends a year and no fewer than three bad dates a month before he finally decides to swear off dating for the rest of law school. After school he joins a firm and hates it and starts a PhD and hates that, too, so he tries campaigning and hates that less. Over the years he lets his coworkers set him up with a lot of serious lawyers and asks out pretty blondes and sleeps with men he meets in bars and still never says it. He says he’s married to his work or is just holding out for the right woman whenever anyone asks.

It’s not a lie. Will follows his work like he’s married to it, running campaigns across the country wherever he’s needed, and ends up in Orange County giving press conferences for a dead man. He doesn’t realize the years are passing and he’s pushing forty and hasn’t made the difference he set out to make in the world until he realizes that winning an election for a dead body is his biggest accomplishment to date. 

He thinks it’s a pretty big accomplishment, if he does say so, but still. It’s not significant in the way he thought he’d be when he started out in politics, the way his father was significant and the way his governor brother is.

Will plans a vacation instead of worrying about Orange County and making a difference. It’s Sam Seaborn’s problem now, and Will loves a good European beach. But Will is a sucker for a charming smile, and he knows as soon as Sam asks that he’s going to go meet with Toby Ziegler and like it, Nice notwithstanding.

Sam fixes him with those piercing blue eyes—eyes that could literally make a hooker weak, Will remembers—and Will thinks about offering his rented apartment to Sam instead of the goddamn Marriott but decides instead to snark at him and re-books his flight with a stop in Washington, D.C. the next morning.

Once Will replaces Sam in the White House, he thinks it’s probably for the best that he didn’t try to sleep with him. It would make the awkward advisory phone calls to transfer Sam’s workload a lot more awkward, besides which Will doesn’t think that fucking your predecessor is ever a good idea professionally.

He still hasn’t said it. Not when they asked him during his background check. Not when Russell asks if he’s going to run into any skeletons in the closet—he doesn’t want to pull a McGarry, he says. He doesn’t say it when he’s advising Russell on the Sanctity of Marriage Act. Watching C.J. struggle through the allegations, though, he feels guilty. Maybe he should try saying it out loud again.

So Will calls Elsie that night. He thinks, in some addled part of his mind, that her presence will help him get the words out.

“What do you want, Will? I’m busy.”

“What a nice way to greet your favorite and most important stepbrother,” he says.

“Seriously, Will. I have a man much more handsome and romantically viable than you coming back from the bathroom in about two minutes, so make it quick.” Now that Will thinks about it, he can hear the chatter and clinking glasses of a restaurant in the background.

“Did you see the articles about C.J. today?”

“About her being gay? Old news, Willy. I’m surprised this is the first time it happened. She’s not, though, right?”

Will shakes his head before realizing Elsie can’t see him. “Not as far as I know. But...” He pauses. 

“But what, Willy?” Elsie says impatiently. He can imagine her face, clutching her phone to her ear in the middle of the restaurant, annoyed with him as ever. 

“C.J.’s not gay. But I...:” he tries to say it. He forms the words in his head, sends them to his throat, but his lips won’t let them pass. There’s a long silence.

“You what, Will?”

“Never mind. Enjoy your date. Not too much, though.”

Elsie’s voice softens a bit. “You know you can tell me anything, right? I know it’s cliche, but you can.”

“Mhm,” he says shakily. She knows. “Go back to your handsome man, Elsie, seriously.”

A few seconds of silence. “Okay,” she says eventually. “And Will? Just remember that Reagan’s not the president anymore. C.J. didn’t put out a statement because it doesn’t matter.” 

Will’s still trying to think of a response when she hangs up.

After all that and 20 years besides, he still can’t do it. 

It’s for the best, anyway. If it got out, he’d be discharged. Hell, he might lose his job. Well, Russell wouldn’t fire him, but he might resign anyway just to avoid the whole ordeal.

Will decided a long time ago that he can’t ever say it because that would make it true, and making it true would, in essence, ruin his life. The glimpse into C.J.’s life today was not comforting. He thinks he’ll keep his secrets for now.

He starts dating Kate because it’s easy with her. He feels like he’s getting the chance he threw away with Macy—the chance to settle down with a smart, pretty blonde who will look great on a campaign stage and give advice even better than her looks. Kate is just as purposeful as he is and never takes any shit from anybody, especially him, and she’s basically everything Will could ever wish for. Elsie looks at them blankly the first time they show up to Thanksgiving, but she doesn’t say anything.

Kate becomes Will’s longest relationship at two years, and he’s so ready to tie himself down and put the pit in his stomach to rest that he goes out and buys a ring three days before their two-year anniversary even happens. 

He’s on one knee in front of the lake they jog around together when Kate shakes her head at him. The little trail around the lake is empty—it’s just their silhouettes looking like a picture on a greeting card. She looks beautiful in the moonlight. Her hair, loose around her shoulders for once in her life, glints as it blows softly with the breeze. 

“Will…” she says, and it’s the same tone she uses when she breaks bad news to parents. “I can’t marry you.”

Will stands up. His arms drop to his sides and dangle there, ring box still open. “Why the hell not? We’ve talked about this, Kate. I thought this is what you wanted.” He feels eerily like a teenager again.

“I thought you knew—this was just a distraction, Will. For both of us.”

“How do you mean?” He knows it’s been a distraction for him, but it’s not as if he doesn’t love Kate. He wouldn’t propose if he didn’t think they could be happy together.

“Do you really not know?” Kate says incredulously. She takes his hand in hers and holds it to her chest. “Will, I’m… I can’t love you. Not like that. Not forever.”

Oh. He knows what that feels like. “What?”

“I thought you—I thought we were protecting each other. For a few years. Not for life.”

And it hits Will that he’s been getting used just as much as he’s been using Kate. 

“I’m gay, Will. I thought you were too. I thought that’s what this was. I’m sorry,” she says. “But we can’t get married.”

“Why did you—” Will starts. He takes his hand off of his chest and lets it fall back to his side. He has so many questions. “Why didn’t we talk about this from the beginning? You didn’t think that it would possibly be a good idea to discuss a multi-year and frankly absurd bearding scheme that has the potential to blow our careers wide open?”

Kate’s stare bores into his. “You of all people know that we can’t talk about things like this. Not at our level.”

Will does know. He knows far too well. 

The initial shock is starting to wear off. Will thinks back to the course of their relationship and knows that he was ignoring the signs. Kate only ever initiated contact in public. She had insisted on having their own bedrooms in each other’s spaces. Whenever she talked about marriage, it was more of a joke than anything, something in the future that may or may not have concerned him. 

He thought they were quirks. Weird habits. But he starts to think that maybe the reason things were so easy with Kate is that she understood him, understood the pressures of government and his reluctance to give away personal information. He didn’t realize it at first, and he should have. But it’s becoming increasingly evident that on some level, he knew, and he knew that they could never talk about it. 

They drive back to his apartment in silence. 

“How can you say it so easily?” Will says at a light.

“What? Speak up.”

“How can you say it so easily? That you’re. You know.” Will makes some vague, one-handed gesture in the air. 

The light turns green and Kate moves the car along. “That I’m a lesbian?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve known it for a fact ever since I found out what ‘lesbian’ meant. It’s just who I am. Like saying that I’m blonde, or that I’m a woman, or a naval commander.”

Will stares blankly ahead. The pavement is slick and shiny from the rain showers earlier. “I’ve never said it out loud,’ he says softly.

“Would you like to?” Kate asks.

He contemplates. He’s avoided saying it because he thinks that’ll make it true. 

But it’s already true, he realizes. He couldn’t outrun it with Macy or Charlotte or Kate and he doesn’t think he’ll succeed anytime soon. Will it really make a difference to say it? It’s just Kate and himself in the car—two people who already know and won’t spread it around.

Kate glances over at him. “Will?”

“I’m.” Will feels the pit in his stomach open and his lungs stopping their steady beat. He forces air through his throat and into his mouth. “I’m gay.”

The world doesn’t end.

He feels strange. It’s like he’s been waiting for the words to reach his mouth his whole life and like they don’t belong there all at the same time.

“I know, Will,” Kate says softly. “It’s okay. Breathe.”

Will inhales and exhales. The pit in his stomach is gone.

“Do you want to try again?”

And Will is a little shaky. It’s real now, real words out in the air. Will Bailey is a homosexual. He’s admitted it.

But the world hasn’t ended. The world has not ended because Will Bailey is gay. So he nods and says it again. He rolls the window down and says it a third time, letting the words dissipate into the wind. 

The world hasn’t ended, and Will is no longer silent.

**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me about the west wing at slightlyraspberry on tumblr or @samseabxrn on twitter! thx for reading kudos and comment if u liked :)


End file.
